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Computer Boot-up

Hi,
When I turn my computer on it starts up goes to the check computer for problems screen, runs the check,
tries to repair a file, says there is no more storage space available and goes back to start over again and repeats the same process. When the check screen runs through its scan, I notice there are zero allocation spaces left. How do I get into the system to clear space?

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I will try to explain but we should really know what OS you have. Assuming it is Windows XP we will go this way.

One way is to go into Safe Mode and use Windows Explorer or My Computer to clear space. None of the drivers for USB or CD drives and other things will work.

Another way to do this is to take your hard drive out of your computer and put it into another computer as a second drive and access it with that computer and remove files from it.

Not knowing anything about your computer for anything except that your hard drive is apparently full I would suggest purchasing a new Larger hard drive and installing Windows On that one and making this one a second drive and getting you info off that one just the data and once it is off you can format it and use it for extra data storage etc.

Sorry I could not be of more help but we really need more info but this is a start.

If you were lucky enough to have upgraded from an earlier operating system like Windows 98 or ME, you might have a Fat32 filesystem. In that case, you could use an earlier startup disk to access the files to delete them. I'd start with something that you know is a large file that you can delete that's already backed up. The reason I mention this is that sometimes smaller drives indicate that the computer is older and may have been upgraded. Some people then convert the filesystem to NTFS, and some don't.

However, if you have the NTFS filesystem, you need to boot up the computer some other way. One way is with a boot disk like UBCD. But you could boot up using the XP disk (if you have one) and getting to the repair console. Then you could use the DOS-like commands to delete some files. (Files you don't need! I once cleaned about two and a half gigs of cookies off a machine loaded with spyware.)

But the UBCD or something like it would give you a graphical interface to use to delete things, which is only slightly easier than the command line. Anything like this can be daunting for someone who's never used it before. But it is a way to get into the NTFS system.

Thanks for the replies. I have windows XP. Currently, I have two hard drives on my system
c-drive and d-drive. I installed the d-drive to give me more space. However, I believe the C-drive is
the main drive and this is the one that is full. Even when I try to go into safe mode, it does the same thing.
Here is the exact process:
I turn on the system
It begins to boot up
A screen comes up showing me system info and the option to hit F1 to continue
or F2 to enter system startup.
When I hit F1, it takes me to the screen that gives me the option of using Safe Mode
or continue with normal startup.
Either option does the same thing. It starts to boot up then it restarts itself after about
a minute or two.
When I hit normal startup, it takes me to the checkdisk screen, which tells me I have a
FAT32 system. It goes through its scan only to tell me it cannot repair a file due to lack
of disk space. It also says all allocation units are used and a message that there was an
error writing the report log. Right after this it restarts itself and goes back to the system
info screen.
When I try Safe Mode, I get a long list of system info, it thinks for about 5 minutes, then
restarts again back to the system info screen
I hope this info helps. One thing I tried, don't know whether it was a good idea, was switch the cable and
pin hookups for the two hard drives to see if this would allow me to access the D-drive.
One other thing. Within the system info screen there is a message that says primary slave drive fails.
That was there before this problem but it sounds ominous.
I appreciate all your help
Thanks, John

What do you means by pin hookups? Is this the drive select? If yes this might be part of your problem. Just switching the IDE ribbon cable around is going to accomplish nothing because the drives are set to C: and D: one is Master and the other is slave. If you messed with the drive selects and go them wrong that is probably why you got the primary slave drive fails.

When the drive fills all the way up it will not run basically because Windows XP has a Page File it is the new name of the swap file but for Win XP cannot run. To fix this you are going to have to back up all of your data on both drives and this is on another computer so you will have to remove the drives and set them up for another system and then when you have all of your data backed up bring them back to your computer and then insert them into it using the largest of the two as drive C: and the smaller as drive D: - drive C: is the master and drive D: is set to the slave.

Then you reinstall Windows XP to the drive C: and formatting during the installation. There is a web site that might give you some help:

When at this site print it out. You can go to the library to do this or a friendís computer. If you think you might need help and have a friend that knows this please have him help or if there are any user groups in your area contacting them will be a help.

FAT32 means you could use a Win 98 startup disk to start the machine and remove or move files on the drive(S). Of course, this means you have to figure out DOS commands. CD to change from one folder (directory) to another. COPY to move files. The correct sequence of commands to move things. What to move. DIR to see what's on the drive. DIR /P to see what's on the drive one page at a time. DEL to delete a file.

Do you have a DOS startup disk? If not, you can make one using a self-installing file located at this site.

Make the disk according to directions. Boot your computer with it. It should say A:\> on a blank screen.

Change to the C: drive by typing:

C:

Then find your directories by typing:

dir /w

. . . which will display the directories in wide format.

Choose which directory has something you can remove. It's hard to figure out what some of them are because many will use a tilde in the filename. You can't see long filenames in DOS. Program Files would probably look like:

progra~1

And My Documents would look like

mydocu~1

So, if you have any large files, like a disk image you don't need, in My Documents, you could go there by typing:

cd mydocu~1

. . . and pressing the enter key.

Then, type:

dir /w

. . . to get a directory of files. Make notes of the filenames you can get rid of, complete with their extensions. For instance, if you have picture files that are taking up a lot of room, they might be jpg files. To delete a file named myhorsebill.jpg, which would look like myhors~ jpg you would type:

del myhors~.jpg

. . .and you'll be asked to confirm the delete.

CD..

will take you back one level, to C:\>

Or, you can move files to the D: drive if it's functional, by typing:

move myhors~.jpg D:

to move it to the root directory of D: or

move myhors~.jpg D:\newpics

if you have a folder on D: called "newpics." You can create this folder by switching to the D: drive:

D:

. . . and typing at the D:\> prompt:

md newpics

. . . Then you can test to see if it's there by typing:

cd newpics

If you were successful, you'll see:

D:\>newpics

It's slow and it's painful. But if you can delete or move enough files to get scandisk to run and complete, you may be back in the system, and you can restart Windows and do some more serious moving.

Once you're finished moving files, you can exit DOS and restart your computer by removing the floppy and either hitting ctrl-alt-del or just shut it off! (::sigh:: Those were the days.)

What seems curious is what's wrong in the BIOS settings so that it's asking you to press F1 to continue or F2 to enter BIOS...

If your PC is more than 3-4 years old, the little CMOS battery might be dying, which will cause the BIOS to forget what drives are connected to it. Try booting up and when asked, press F2. Whatever make of BIOS you have, the time and date should be displayed on the opening page, otherwise youll need to work through the options to find them. Check both time and date are correct. If both are right, the battery is ok, if they're wrong, the battery needs replacing. While you're in the BIOS, work your way through all the other options and settings to familiarise yourself with them all

The battery easily replaced ... Remove the case and look for a small circular silver disk on the motherboard, it's a large 'hearing aid' type battery, usually CR202 I think the number is, but not right sure on that. Prise it out carefully cos the contacts are a bit fragile and replace it ...

You'll need to reset your BIOS again when you switch back on, so boot up and keep tapping F2 until the BIOS appears again... Apart from the time and date settings, the only other vital one is regarding your hard drives. Somewhere in the BIOS, is a page that controls your HD(s), if there's an 'Autodetect' or 'Automatic' option then use that to find your drives.

Some BIOS's have 'preset' settings, usually a 'basic' get you working setting, others have several including an 'Optimum' or equivalent. Try them.

That should get the PC booting through and hopefully, resetting the hard drive in the BIOS might well get it to detect it's correct size again.

Failing that, you'll need either a boot floppy or a DOS boot CD. Boot to the DOS command promt, type in the following exactly, there's 1 space between the command and the 2nd bit...

CD c:\windows\tempdel *.*

That should free up all the junk and stuff that Windows tends to collect over time.

I'll give it a try or am I better off having a computer repair service handle this?

If you don't feel comfortable doing it, then by all means have a repair service do it. DOS commands aren't for everyone. (They used to be, before DOS was abandoned for Windows . . . ) Using the Command Line is still very useful for those who want to be able to do things in their computer, but the average user may never need them.

When I first started fixing computers, my daughter brought me hers, which she had upgraded to XP, with just this problem. At first, I was stymied - the error message and blue screen made me think that the only possible way to fix it was to re-install Windows, and since she had lost her XP upgrade disk I was certain that I was going to have to go out and buy another one. I sweated over it for a few hours and then on a whim tried the Win98 boot disk. Once I figured out that there was not enough room on the hard drive, it was simple for me to go into the drive and delete things. As soon as I cleared up some space, the machine started with no problems.

Once started, I was able to run Spacemonger on it and found that two and one-half gigs were devoted to cookies! Spyware had been hitting sites again and again and placing cookies on the machine by the thousands. She had two partitions, so things in My Documents could be moved to the second partition, freeing up space on the first.

But I'd used DOS for many years and it wasn't a challenge. In the years since then, I've acquired a number of tools to work with, including boot disks that will boot into another operating system in memory, though that won't always work if the computer doesn't have the right equipment and enough memory.

When you bought your second hard drive it may have come with a cd that would enable you to migrate what was on the old hd to the new one, including the op system.

If you have a cd that came with the new hard drive, put it in and boot with it.
If you do not have it go to the support site fro the manufacturer that made your new hard drive and you may be able to download it and burn it to a cd.

By the way, if you have a slave drive it is always a good idea to put the paging file on it instead of on the primary drive. Setting data storage on it is a good idea as well.

Thanks, everyone. I got my system back up.
I found my system recovery cds and put in the first cd
When the prompts came up, I kept hitting no until
it brought me to an A: prompt.
At this point, I followed Herk's directions and was able
to access individual files of which I deleted enough
space to allow my system to do a checkdisk run
and start up. then it was just a matter of going in
and deleting unwanted files.
I appreciate all of your help with this and will recommend this site to others.
Sincerely, John